Through News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch is the world’s leading newspaper proprietor. His company is also the largest pay TV owner and stood to grow larger still if its bid for BSkyB had been approved. That was aborted following the phone hacking scandal at his newspaper, the News of the World.

Should the newspaper scandal and the TV bid have been connected?

The issue with Rupert Murdoch’s attempted takeover of BSkyB is clearly one of media conglomeration, as well as the notional idea of a ‘fit and proper’ media owner.  The proposed acquisition of BSkyB by News Corporation was undoubtedly advantageous for both companies, but the threats to media plurality and the increasing evidence that Murdoch would be seen as ‘exercising power without responsibility’ due to his involvement in the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World meant that the deal’s collapse was seen by many legal commentators (as well as journalists) as inevitable.

The Broadcasting Act 1990 is the first to assert that Ofcom license-holders must be ‘fit and proper’ – but it does not define what is meant by this term.  Indeed, section 253(3) of the Communications Act 2003 also states that applicants must be ‘fit and proper’ and this is once more reiterated in Ofcom’s Change of Control Notification Form in Section 1.  It is only in this document that some guidance is given regarding actual specifications for a ‘fit and proper’ media owner: absence of criminal convictions and civil penalties make up the entirety of the advice given.

However, Jason Chess of media law firm Wiggin examines a loophole in the guidelines, stating that ‘someone with a criminal record “…will not necessarily be prevented from holding a licence”’.  In his experience, he argues that Ofcom’s priority appears to be to find an owner capable of complying with UK broadcasting codes, rather than any previous ethical misdemeanours.

To study the (un)ethical activities of license-holders we must first analyse the make-up of BSkyB’s current shareholders.  At present, only 39% of BSkyB is owned by News Corporation; the remaining 61% is held across a wide range of shareholders nowhere near the scale of News Corporation.  News Corporation is therefore a minority owner of BSkyB, but the single largest block shareholder.  Nevertheless, News Corporation is not the license-holder of BSkyB, nor is technically the absolute controlling interest.

Eleanor Steyn points out that ‘basic principles of corporate liability mean that it is difficult to pin what is done by executives of a company on the company itself, let alone pinning it on another group company’. Indeed, one would have to look at the crossover in board membership between BSkyB and News Corporation, not to mention that of its UK arm, News International, if we were to ascertain whether those suspected of being culpable of grave ethical malpractice would be in the same position of power at BSkyB.

It can be said, then, that the public backlash was against a company thought to have unethical practices across all facets of its operation, yet it can be seen as preposterous to link one aspect of a business with another entirely different enterprise.  Yet David Cameron’s comments that ‘they should stop thinking about mergers when they’ve got to sort out the mess they’ve created’ implies that a multi-national business (and indeed its CEO) is unable to manage other aspects of that business while an internal review is being conducted.

Ed Miliband asked for ‘the purchase of BSkyB [not to] proceed until after the criminal inquiries are complete’, yet Ofcom’s own stringent regulation would have taken care of any broadcasting malpractice, the general journalistic category of which has not yet been proven at the director-level of News Corporation.

Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport, Jeremy Hunt, told the House of Lords via Lady Rawlings that there were ‘sufficient safeguards’ in place for Rupert Murdoch’s bid, and advised that it need not be delayed in the wake of the phone-hacking revelations.  Lady Rawlings added that ‘the decision would be made purely on the issue of media plurality’.

The tactical move of reversing the decision to spin-off Sky News, therefore triggering a referral to the Competition Commission, was a shrewd way of placing the takeover bid’s agenda (and all associated media focus) firmly within the sphere of ‘Monopolies and Mergers’, rather than the ethical activity of Rupert Murdoch’s corporation at large.

Rival media organisations, including BT, the Guardian Media Group, Associated Newspapers, Trinity Mirror, the Telegraph Media Group and Northcliffe Media, formed a loose alliance to condemn Murdoch’s takeover even when Sky News was assuredly going to become an independent entity.  A spokesman for ‘The Media Alliance’ stated that the takeover gave News Corporation ‘greater power to restrict or distort competition through cross-promotion, bundling…and distorting the advertising market’.

There can be no doubt that News Corporation’s ultimate desire is to compete with the BBC and other media organisations in buying up programmes and securing sports rights across its infrastructure of broadband and high definition services.  The key to the BSkyB takeover is likely to be financial, with the profit margins of the Sky digital service far outweighing the UK newspaper assets controlled (and owned) by the Murdochs.  However, it is also important to note that The Times, thought to be a print stalwart, makes a huge financial loss and requires ample subsidy from other News International services.  In the same way, Sky News was widely reported as having approximately £20 million of its own losses to deal with annually.  With these examples, Murdoch can be seen as dedicated to news services far more than their bottom lines.

The influence that Rupert Murdoch employs in the political sphere through these news services is well-documented, yet the allegations by Chris Bryant that BSkyB was operated as a ‘fear and favour’ process appears weak in comparison to Murdoch’s proprietorship of three intensely dominant newspapers.  There is no sign that potential ownership of BSkyB can be compared to the power exercised by these titles (not even with the inclusion of Fox News as a broadcast example), owing to Ofcom’s regulations on impartiality.

If the phone-hacking investigation is to highlight missing or inadequate regulation of newspapers, there is no equivalent investigation or admittance into such an issue for broadcasters. The closest investigation was an internal review commissioned by BSkyB’s board into the editorial practices of (and spending of the editorial budget by) Sky News, which concluded ‘no suggestion of impropriety’.

With James Murdoch being current chairman of BSkyB and executive chairman of News International, it is no surprise that 156,000 people and organisations made last-minute submissions to the Government’s public consultation on the proposed bid, yet the link between phone-hacking and the takeover bid for BSkyB is one fabricated by commentators convinced that the Murdoch family run a vast-reaching criminal outfit in which they are able to precisely micromanage every corner of their consortium for maximum nefarious gain.  Although it cannot be argued that the Murdochs are free of responsibility for the illegal undertakings by their employees, they certainly do not fall foul of all the legal tests set for both their print and broadcasting ventures.

UPDATE (4/2/2012): Roy‘s feedback – Well, Nick, this is a well argued polemic, clearly well researched. I don’t agree with you, but that’s beside the point in terms of the marking. I’d just like you to consider the implications of media being concentrated in too few hands, regardless of whether it involves Murdoch. Should there be a cut-off point in terms of size. Anyway, it’s a good read.

Ordinarily, I’d jump to the defense of those who have been wronged by sloppy reporting, but the idea of ‘defamation’ really winds me up.  Okay, Sheryl, so The People, The Mirror and whatever other toilet-roll rag had your face on the front page instead of some actual global issue, but they were only quoting from two regrettably limited perspectives.  Just because they didn’t flash their cash in your face for you to ‘tell your side of the story’ doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t ‘true’.  The report truthfully quoted what Gazza/Gazza’s mum said in an interview.  If they were ill-informed, why don’t you just write to the PCC or get your rightful response.  Hell, pocket some of the red-top’s blood money and do one of their ‘tell-alls’.  But to sue them for defamation, when throughout the programme no-one ever mentions any explicit effects apart from her daughter being caught up in some ‘nasty words at school’ seems a little bit extreme.  She tearfully puts her house on the market to contribute to her ‘fighting fund’, while her lawyer eggs her on!  Am I the only one that thought every single person in this programme stank of self-interest and hypocrisy?

Lembit Opik blames The Sunday Times for him losing the election, his legal adviser/best mate blames the UK legal system for allowing The Sunday Times to have an opinion section, and a completely random ‘local politician’ (who’s clearly not Lembit, because he’s out of a job) starts getting all meta-philosophical about smoke, fires and smokescreens.  The barrister they find to take the case (because his lawyer is apparently all out of ideas) pretty much tells Lembit that you can’t get paid for a spread in Hello! and then expect to remain out of the public eye. Lembit claims he only did the piece in Hello! because The Mirror kept following him (presumably in case he did some impromptu stand-up and we all missed it) and Hello! hasn’t printed anything libellous about him.  Except he’s probably never been featured in Hello! before.  And he probably didn’t see the article before it went to print, so they actually got lucky and managed to escape Lembit’s Super Libel Locator™.  (No-one mentions Sheryl Gascoigne’s appearance on I’m A Celebrity. last year.)

I agree with Sam Wollaston’s review in The Guardian, here: ‘the libel lawyers are given a very easy ride’, but by contrast UK libel law is apparently too soft on the press, especially on hard working UK citizens, of which Lembit is only one of 65 million.  I’ll scoot over the bit where he rides to a consultation meeting on a Segway, continues his battle against unemployment by auditioning to be an after-dinner speaker and constructs two skilfully dull anagrams of his name, making a big deal out of the fact he’s Estonian. (Remember that, it’ll be important in a minute).

The reason libel law is so infuriating is because the burden of proof lies on the defendant to prove that their claims are true.  In a sense, you’re guilty until you can prove yourself innocent.  If this fact had been made clear at the top of the programme, we’d all be thinking Sheryl and Lembit are on their merry way to victory.  The reason I suspect Disembodied VoiceOver didn’t make this point was because in Sheryl’s case, the claims might not have been true but they were true to what was said in the interview.  As for Lembit, well it was an opinion piece by Rod Liddle, The Sunday Times’ answer to Littlejohn.   Although you can argue he shouldn’t be given a platform in the first place, the views are his own and clearly identified as such, and therefore his views only conform to the warped sense of truth that resides in his head alongside all his favourite ‘miserable, seaweed munching‘ Welsh people who presumably live in the Lost City of Atlantis, just underneath Barry Island.

A parade of various legal-eagles flicks through so many printouts of publications I forget which case is which, who is actually a lawyer, who’s getting paid and who’s fault it might be.  Each defendant seems to want the press shut down, and I nearly started a game where every time I heard the word ‘true’, I’d burn one of the books on reliability and narrative I’ve been glued to for the past few months.  So, The Sunday Times is at fault because they imply Lembit has an active love life, and infers that he spends more time on his love life than on his career. Apparently, identifiying Lembit as Estonian is as bad as calling him a Jew – oh, hold on, aren’t you implying that ‘Jew’ is a derogatory term, and therefore we can infer that this legal advisor is anti-Semitic?  No, sorry, it’s more deplorable that all the publications are playing for time with their evidence submission deadlines and a few even ask for extensions to really piss off The Little Guy.  The irony here, pointed out by our Sheryl, is that these are people whose publications are totally reliant on working to deadline, yet the judge accepts their difficult time restraints in multi-tasking.  Scathing.

The programme switches from a deep and fascinating debate on press ethics (‘I don’t know why they do it’) to some sort of vindictive retaliation where the only suitable retribution and vindication is cold hard cash.  Sheryl brings home the bacon because The Other Side’s witnesses never turn up, to which her sly double-barrelled barrister mentions that one witness was probably Gazza, and he’s not the most reliable sort – of course he manages to say this without any implication or possible inferral, using some sort of legal witchcraft.

Sheryl gets £30k and an apology mumbled in open court, while being promised a tiny printed retraction on the same page that Gazza’s face once beamed out from.  But it’s okay, because it probably cost the other side £50k, which apparently ‘isn’t much, but it must’ve hurt their pocket somewhere’.  I’ll take your word on that, Sheryl.  You’re the expert.  She cracks open the champagne, her house is taken off the market and it’s another victory for the ordinary ex-wife of one of the nation’s most famous former footballers.  But surely the BBC could’ve contracted Lembit for another few episodes of Have I Got News For You and taken far more pot-shots at News International without trying to make us feel sorry for him losing his seat in Parliament and claiming it was all Rupert Murdoch’s fault.  I half-expected Lembit to say that his phone was bugged, too.  Oh well, there’s always the next episode in the series – we’ve got Uri Geller, Danielle Lloyd and George Galloway to get through, yet.

Panorama: Smoking and the Bandits
Date: March 7, 2011
Length: 29:00
First broadcast on BBC One, then made available online through BBC iPlayer.

This investigation focusses on the financial aspect of illegal smoking imports, identifying tax evasion and highlighting the national deficit directly affecting ‘you’ (the viewer).  Sam Poling emphatically notes what ‘we’ will pay in rising NHS costs and to HMRC in order to keep both smokers and non-smokers interested.  The variety of cinematic techniques serves to make the broadcast dramatic – jump-cuts, split-screen and atmospheric music are all intermittently employed.

To convey honesty in an interview with an independent expert there are shots which show lighting and camera equipment – breaking down the fourth wall (of the fourth estate!).  The top of the programme accompanies a raid on a tenement flat, however we are never told the consequences or sentencing of those arrested.

The episode tracks counterfeit imported cigarettes, with a subsequent investigation into the toxicity of the goods, using ‘exclusive secret footage’.  The stock footage is of variable quality and therefore of indeterminable age – the reliability of the report becomes less important than the action of the narrative. Poling admits ‘I did not know the importance of these papers then’ – giving rise to a notion of selective revelation by the narrator for a heightened sense of drama.

From Our Own Correspondent (FOOC)
Date: March 10, 2011
Length: 28:18
First broadcast on Radio 4, then made available as a podcast.

One of Radio 4’s oldest flagship broadcasts, the entire premise of the programme feels like a relic from the World Service’s war-time stereotype.  The received pronunciation and slow, scripted speech does little to endorse its mission to ‘bring a personal perspective to world news’.  Instead, these professional journalists and correspondents present an anecdotal view of ‘my friend Bernard’ in the Ivory Coast and the café preferences of the driver of the press vehicle in Libya.

Yet without these snapshots, we would be unable to understand the instantaneous fact-driven news which chooses only headline developments.  The benefit is of an explorative journalist who is able to not just chase expert sources to back up his lead but also provide a context into sometimes the seemingly insignificant, the unexpected and the mundane.

These tales are treated with equal weight – Kate Adie at the top of the programme does not discriminate between life in a civil warzone and a band ‘playing their way out of Poverty’ in the Congo, resisting temptations to state ‘and finally…’ in that derogatory offbeat newsreader cliché.  FOOC points to its wider relevance as a microcosmic tale of the area which that correspondent is charged with covering.

SURHUL’s Commercial Services Department has declared a deficit of £11,000 in just six weeks of trading. Details of the dramatic loss, which were sent in an email marked as confidential to all student staff members, have been released less than a week after two permanent staff members were controversially made redundant.

An e-mail from the Commercial Development Manager, Sarah Stuckey, was sent on Friday afternoon. The email outlines the deficit to be “equivalent to a loss of approximately £300 per day” following a stock take on 14th February 2011. A further alarming comparison is made by Ms Stuckey when she says that “it is equivalent to giving away free of charge every drink, ticket and piece of food served last Friday, day and night, at all [three] venues.”

Including wastage of £1750 and a staff drinks allocation of £2269, the £11,000 in unaccounted stock totals a gross loss of over £15,019. Ms Stuckey resolves to tighten supervision and suspend complimentary end-of-shift drinks for staff. Managers will be performing random line checks on the bar, and till checks on all venues whilst reviewing CCTV footage.

Ms Stuckey assures staff that management “have spent time investigating reports to ensure this is not a data entry error in accounting, re-counting stock to ensure accuracy, and reviewing CCTV to identify…any large scale thefts from stock areas” but admits that there were “no significant findings”.

This follows the forced redundancy of two of the longest serving and most senior members of SURHUL’s management team last week, in a ‘restructuring’ exercise. Matt Breed, Bars & Venues Manager, and Mark Austin, Entertainments Manager, lost their jobs after an investigation into the staff management structure resulted in ‘no alternative’.

Sean O’Donnell, SURHUL’s General Manager wrote an email to staff proposing the new structure on 11th January 2011, stating that “the student sector within licensed trade has witnessed further changes in the market as a result of changing student demographics” and that the restructure leaves SURHUL “positioned to react to these changes in a timely fashion to best provide for our membership”.

However, in a later email, it was announced that the SURHUL is advertising to hire four new members of managing staff, with a cumulative salary of over £90,000, along with plans to hire a fifth manager once the initial four are in place.

EDIT (31 March 2011): In this article, it could be inferred that the dismissal of Mark Austen and Matt Breed were either consequences of, or that Mr. Austen and Mr. Breed were identified as responsible for, the £11,000 missing stock.  This is incorrect.  The restructuring of SURHUL’s Commercial Services is also unconnected to the loss of stock, and should not be taken as a result of SURHUL’s recent findings.

As I sit in my dressing-gown at my laptop at midday, with umpteen tabs open in Firefox, I often find myself the brunt of my housemates’ ridicule. Who am I? Am I some sort of 21st-Century Oscar Wilde, with the complete works of John Milton available to peruse on my iPhone 4? Am I a hardcore blogger, born at the dawn of the nineties and looking for my next conspiracy theory? No, I’m a journalist, and I’ve learned that you’ve got to stay in almost as much as you’ve got to go out.

Without making the case that the new era of Multimedia Journalists™ are the poor man’s polymaths (Andy Halls has perhaps already alluded to this), I’m simply saying that to be a successful journalist, one must absorb a vast amount of information.

And now, a lot of that can be done with a solid internet connection. As a current affairs journalist, you’re supposed to know more than the average person does about the last time there was a large oil spill, what percentage of cuts were laid on in 1979, and what happens when your travel company isn’t ABTA-certified. Sometimes you’ve got to do a bit of research (cross-referenced and checked, naturally) before you hit the road with some knee-jerk questions.

It is a careful compromise between scholarly research and the most heinous of journalistic crimes: recycling from other sources. I suppose, as an English Literature undergraduate, my perspective of being an aspiring journalist is balanced with my current academic discipline. To be an effective journalist, one must have the ability to reflect a readership, so it helps to know what’s going on out there. Yes, I understand that a lot of what goes on can be learned from your sources on the street, but if you’re out there all the time, then you’ll forget that Question Time’s been on.

Some student journos I know (admittedly, not very good ones), have little knowledge of current affairs. They’re too busy perfecting the standfirst on their magnum opus exposé to have a flick through the Guardian, and their homepage is their perpetually-refreshing e-mail account and the Oxford English Thesaurus rather than BBC News and Twitter’s trending topics.

I’m not a seasoned Foreign Correspondent for the BBC, and I don’t have a newswire on my desktop, so I rely on other media to feed me some semblance of what’s going on. If I see some half-baked semi-scoop in the Staines Informer, chances are I’ll go out and follow it up, and probably come up with something more informative. Speaking of which, It’s just arrived on the doorstep, so I’m going to put the kettle on and go and pick it up.

Sure, the first half of my day has been spent indoors, but I won’t be spending the rest of it playing catch-up. I now know exactly where to go, who to contact, and about what.

26/5 [1334] I’ve filled up the car, I’ve been food shopping and I’ve had my hair butchered. Time to drive back to RHUL.

26/5 [1546] I went straight to the office. I’m currently begging the printers to not charge me. This is simple, seeing as I haven’t finished (or started) the issue.

27/5 [2006] I’ve been in the office for hours. I’m now watching the Champions League final there on my projector, eating a Pot Noodle and proofing.

28/5 [0045] I’m still in the office, going slowly mad. I bought cake for my Editorial Team, but they still hate me. I can hear them curse me…

28/5 [0458] I would rather be anywhere in the world than the Queen’s Annexe right now.  I haven’t left the desk since 11am on Wednesday. Am I finished? Am I f-

28/5 [1748] I’ve left the office for only the second time since 11am Wednesday to get ready for the Laurel Awards Ceremony. Never mind that deadline…

29/5 [0907] went straight from the Laurels to the Office to slave away again. He’s racking up his 46th hour in here. Cabin fever? Please note:  I’m still in full dinner suit attire.

29/5 [2359] I feel like everything since Tuesday has been one continuous day. The Jack Bauer of journalism?

30/5 [1619] I’ve called in the cavalry and broken out the chocolate fingers.  Any more calls from the printers about bleed areas and I’ll go insane.  At least I’ve changed my clothes.

30/5 [2240] I’m now designing an issue on what feels like the office on the surface of the sun. I’m sweltering. I’ve locked the door and taken off my top. Topless editing:  I mean business.

31/5 [0004]  I’m screaming “Hey! Editor, I’m undeniable! Hey, Doctor, I’m certifiable, oh…”

31/5 [1335] I’m remarkably annoyed that Nick Grimshaw had no idea who Butthole Surfers were.  Radio1 is the only thing telling me what time it is.

31/5 [1418] I have no idea what sort of meat was in my bowl of ravioli and, quite frankly, I don’t care. It’s my first meal for 24hrs.

31/5 [1832] I hope no-one tells me that he’s wasting his life editing an article on bra size surcharges.  Now, where to put that picture of breasts…

31/5 [2353] I’m cutting this, I’m cutting that, I’m still carving out an issue.

1/6 [0121] I’ve just realised I haven’t had dinner. Bit late for that now, I guess. On to exporting EPS! Boot up Adobe Distiller and we’re out of here…

1/6 [0151] I’ve finished the issue, pending a check from my lovely Executive Editor. And they say flattery gets you nowhere. Now for Volunteering Week…

1/6 [0932] I’m up, showered, shaved (he desperately needs new foils) and ready for Volunteering Week.

1/6 [1136] I just saved over The Orbital with the Volunteering Week templates, half an hour before the print deadline. I want to die.

1/6 [1214] I met the deadline. Just. I hope Morton understands his ‘creative time-management’.

On deadline day, I was involved in a joint The Orbital/Insanity session for local school children as part of Volunteering Week, teaching them how we put stuff together in print and on air. I made some funky templates and then saved over the (thank christ, already exported) front page of the publication. Smooth, Mr. Editor, smooth.

On deadline day, due to Volunteering Week/eating, I missed a call from the printers, who rang my Executive Editor, who rang me, a call which I missed, who texted me, which I started to read before the President of the Students’ Union rang me.  Repeat this three times and the system developed that you’d just get the President to ring me to tell me to ring the printers/Executive Editor.  Anyone would think I was ignoring my Executive Editor.  Not true, honest!

Mortons Print, my lovely pre-press/press people, couldn’t get enough of telling me what I’d done wrong.  This image would be cropped, this was the wrong size, did you put the images in CMYK not RGB? (yes!) Did you want the edges to bleed through here, where the spread is just – look, just print the damn thing.  Please.  Efficiency and thoroughness definitely got on my nerves.

I’ve slept for approximately five hours in a week, to almost single-handedly pull off the biggest change The Orbital has seen in almost twenty years.  There’s a lot of almosts in there,  and there’s also a long way to go.  I couldn’t have survived without my equally-insane Editorial Team, who had to endure me barking orders at them, and most notably shouting ‘I wanted to be a journalist, not mayor of crazy town!’, at various intervals.

Although I’d looked at Adobe InDesign CS4 and various PDFs countless times, I can’t tell you the physical and emotional relief when I actually saw the palette, with 3000 copies of my creation sitting outside the SU building on schedule, on time, on Thursday 4th June.

For the curious among you, I’d better mention that the quote on the inside front page of the newspaper is from the first edition of the Yale Daily News…where Rory Gilmore served as editor.

The innovation which we begin by this morning’s issue is justified by the dullness of the time and the demand for news among us.

I now produce a fortnightly newspaper with a monthly magazine supplement.  My life expectancy has drastically shortened.  Roll on, September.  Let’s do it all again.

Sitting alone in the flat seems to be a habit of mine, and I’m still no sure whether I’m an agoraphobic sociopath or just plain lazy.  Let’s hope it’s the latter, eh?  Yeah, that’ll be it.  Probably.  Oo-err.

SURHUL have had another elections season, this time for the Executive Committee.  Politics, at even the base student level, simply exposes the fallacies of a finite term in any office.  Student volunteers in a part-time position for less than one solid year?  There’s going to be little ‘change we can believe in‘ at Royal Holloway.  Prove me wrong! (Please?)

Oh, our Principal has resigned.  Did you hear that?  No surprise, most of my student brethren are apathetic, or didn’t even know who the Principal was in the first place.  Either Egham is a black hole of activism or I’m just plugged in to everything to avoid my degree – oh, that’ll be it.  Nick Stylianou, the information sponge?

The end of term – this mean’s I’ve submitted all of my essays and now look forward to three exams in April/May.  Wonderful.  Seeing as my timed essays were slightly better than mediocre (i.e. suitable enough to pass the year), glorious complacency will no doubt set in.  I’m looking forward to the last-minute stress overload.  “Fuck it, 40%” seems to be the 2009 mantra.

So now I’m officially Editor of the SURHUL Publication for a year.  Let’s see what this new chapter has in store for me, shall we?  It’ll give me a bit more to do than sporadic theatre trips, wishing I was abroad while constantly refreshing lastminute.com flights and trundling around the Guildford/Godalming area in Fifi listening to Fall Out Boy.  I’ll be ringing up print companies for quotes, firing up Adobe InDesign, replying to bizarre press releases and begging for interviews and free tickets.

You probably skipped over the bizarre press releases bit.  Oh, Nick, he’s always exaggerating. No, really, among all the NUS statements, new music circulars, occasional DVD screeners, I received a press release about ‘condoms for dogs’.  Mmhmm.

Condoms.  For dogs.

Needless to say, I deleted it, but not immediately.  It required further investigation.  Sadly, it didn’t garner any adequate responses.  Do you have to apply it to the dog when it becomes aroused?  Do you have to play ‘wingman’ to your dog when he’s out on the pull, diving in when he’s just about to get his little doggy-groove on to suppress that unwanted puppy pregnancy?  Or do you staple this contraption permanently on your canine friend, producing horrifically explosive and unimaginable retrograde results?

These aren’t questions that keep me up at night, thank God.

I can always rely on my hobbies to nicely tick over and aid my time-wasting:  I’m still taking a photo a day, which surprises even myself sometimes.  I’m occasionally getting up in the morning and even the weather’s brightening up.  I’m definitely having some sort of identity crisis….

This is what I’m doing at any one time.  But for now,  I’ve got to pack my car up to go home.  Three weeks of MarioKart Wii-playing a-hoy!  I will beat you.  Waluigi is a master of karting disaster.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I told you I’ve been horrendously busy, so a quick recap?  I got a few poorly-written essays back, with poor marks.  I went to Societies’ Ball.  I didn’t win either of the two awards I was nominated for.  I didn’t have a very good evening.  I resigned from The Founder.

Why?  Because I decided to climb that greasy pole. Sure, it sounds like I haven’t had a good few weeks.  Whinge whinge, moan moan.

It’s been SURHUL elections season.

I ran for SU Publication Editor, commonly referred to as Editor of The Orbital.  I won.

Through stress and strain, with the help of a faithfully lovely set of campaign aides, canvassing in the freezing cold and snow, I won.

After Candidates’ Question Time, being grilled more than flaming beef, I won.

I was uncontested, but I didn’t want to seem arrogant, so I campaigned hard.  I didn’t enter the elections to gain power or accolade.  I wanted to change the SU publication into something better.  And restore faith to something I felt had massive potential.  I put my heart and soul into my speech for Candidates’ Question Time.  Maybe I didn’t smile enough.  Maybe I was too stern.  I was worried about portraying myself badly.  I think, unnaturally, I was tense.  Not nervous, just tense.  I didn’t repeat my manifesto verbatim – copies were available at the ballot boxes, online and on request.  I worked hard on something which was mine and which was much more importantly honest.

Being Orbital Editor is more than just being any society president.  It also encompasses being the editor of the Student’s Union Publication. That’s not only a role encompassing commitment and professionalism, but it also requires a much larger responsibility to all the students of Royal Holloway: (and that’s) trust.

The editor of the Guardian on its 100th birthday, CP Scott, famously wrote ‘comment is free, but facts are sacred’.
It’s that trust which needs to be upheld by whoever is chosen as editor, and for our facts to be relevant to an audience of over 8 000 students.  We need to understand and respond to the basic premise of campus media in the first place. Without a relevant publication, the publication ceases to exist.

Informing students in the best way possible may encompass a variety of formats and opinions, but it is imperative that we get a fundamentally coherent message across campus.

We’ve got a moral duty to deliver necessary information (and viewpoints) on which you can make a range of decisions about your union; as well as maintain a material existence.  The editor must operate both sides of the publication’s activity: it costs money to print, so I’ve got to make sure I can manage that. The trick is to find unity between the business and the message.  I feel I have the required skills to handle such a task, with valuable experience in enterprise and journalism.

The publication is, as Mr. Scott states: ‘an institution’.  It reflects and influences the life of a whole community – our community.
I want an informative Orbital:  the overwhelming majority of students I spoke to today look elsewhere to find out what’s happening on campus – that’s not just news, but reviews and opinion, too.

I want to improve how it’s running at the moment: online and in print.

But above all, I want to inspire students to read, write for and be proud of your publication. It is your publication. But I can’t start without gaining your trust.

But the lesson I’ve learned from this election season?  That I don’t like pigeon-holing.  I don’t like being categorised, or second-guessed.  I’m not just ‘that guy who doesn’t write for The Orbital’ or ‘that guy who’s clearly a new version of x’ or even ‘that arrogant wanker’.  My public persona takes a lot out of me.

Maybe it’s too much of Freud’s The Uncanny.  Or maybe I’m having an identity crisis?  I suppose if I knew certainly who I am, it would make it easier for me to know who I’m not.  How quintessentially adolescent.

This place is a little community.  And the problem with a cyclical little community is that there’s only enough change you can believe in before it all starts to sound the same.  Never mind about equality diversity, I’m talking about politics and sociology.  You’ve only got one chance to allow people to like you or dislike you.  And quite obviously it’s a pity there’s no answer booklet.  Now that’s pressure.  Especially since there’s only a finite amount of people here!

Forever incomplete.  And tomorrow I turn nineteen.  Maybe this time next year I’ll have more answers.  I’ll hopefully have a few successful tries under my belt by then.  And some issues of The Orbital.

“I’ve had better”.  That’s a phrase I’ve uttered numerous times since I’ve been back at university.  In case anyone thinks I was being my usual coy (read: cryptically, annoyingly-closed) self, it’s because my dad spent most of the winter break in hospital.  I think I was entitled to be a small misery guts, mmkay?  Christmas Day, however, was one of the few days which passed without a hitch. Congratulations to Team Stylianou!

So, to further elaborate on going home properly for the first time in many weeks: no washing up, no macaroni cheese ready meals….the ability to drive into Guildford town centre whenever I wanted…it was student bliss.

I’ve got a packed 2009, though.  After spending a New Year’s Eve with a select three friends and my mother (and my Wii), I decided I’d take at least one photo for every day of the new year.  A daunting, perhaps clichéd task?  Well, my reasoning was that it would force me to not only become horrifically familiar with my dSLR, but also seize control of my days and actually…do something. Eating and sleeping is now permanently fixed in my timetable, not an optional module for my time.  Not forgetting that I plan to merge the term ‘get involved’ and ‘Student’s Union’ to a new extreme.  From my QMUL visit to a Taboo party in Egham, my plan has worked so far.

Having said that my year was to be busy, campus is as dull as ever.  This greatly disappoints me.  Although I’m busy Monday-Friday with my course and various SU commitments, the amount of people who have left by 7pm on a Friday is tragic.  I’ve had an all-time high of three people (including myself) who have stayed the weekend in a flat of eight.  To take that average and place it in context, that’s roughly 37% of people who stay on campus and in Egham at the weekends. Ridiculous!  A new term would surely bring a change to this – we’re settled in, we’ve made friends.  Why, essentially, do people feel the need to commute to university if they have a place on campus!  I’m sorry, but this gets me riled up.  So much so, that I’m sitting in my flat, watching my home Sky+ streaming from my Slingbox.  Actually, that’s not too bad…

Check in to my flickr account, have a look at my eclectic(ly embarrassing) last.fm charts and hopefully I’ll be back more often with some personal gonzo journalism. I also accept unannounced campus visits, invitations to other universities and [love] letters.  This term?  I’m going to have a better one.